Sunday, September 03, 2006

I remember When.......................

I thought of doing this I remember when article to demostrate how old I am and how life has overtaken me ;)

I remember when..................

a) Communicating with Pen Pals with mail, and response use to come within a week and how over the moon one would be. I think, nowadays, when one does not getYM response of SMS within minutes, one becomes impatient.

b) Watching TV was a neighbourhood afair. We had a TV, and the neighbour's kids would watch what ever programme that we were watching thru the fence. Now, we have TV in almost every room and individuals will choose what ever programme from a buffet of channels.

c) I would be dependent to learn thru my sets of Book of Knowledge or Encyclopedia Brittanica to find answers to life questions. Now, one cannot live without Google.

d) High speed connection means a Hayes 19200 modem.I would go goo goo gaa gaa when Modems speed wud double every 6 month from 2400 to 9600. Nowadays, its all broadband of minumum of 1 Mbps.

e) Hanging out in the warung and sipping a cup of coffee for a price of 50sen and when the Minister announce an increase of the price of sugar, there was hoo hah about the increase of price of coffee by 10sen. Now, we don't bat an eye paying 10 bucks for a cup of coffee from Starbucks.

f) We play games and do excercise for the fun of it. Now, we pay to get tortured and get someone to tell us how to do excercise and hang around with us to count the reps.

g) Listening to music means lugging around casettes and boom box or leeching it of records and have stacks of record collection. Now, its a case of storing 7500 musics in a small device calls theiPOD which some complaint there are not enough space ;-)

h) Watching movies use to cost 65 cents for u to get a neck strain or RM1.40 for a more "luxurious seat" for better view of the movies and people making out. Nowadays u pay RM10 bucks for a seat in front and get surrounded by annoying little kids, neck strain, and movie commentators in what is called theCineplex.

i) Having to type my thesis, i had to master the use of a typewriter and listening to its clickety click and ring of bell at every end of paragraph. One cannot afford mistakes lest u want to type the whole page again. Nowadays, u use the PC to type, watch movies, and listen to music all roll in one while enjoying a cup of iceNesLO (Nescafe/Milo) - woops sorry, MoccaFrapucino.

j) Crowd around and queue at a payphone to make a call to your girl friend at odd hours of the night. Nowadays, even teenagers havehandphone to SMS and talk from the comfort of your toilet.

k) How collecting Ang Pow or Duit Raya was a godsend affair and packets have evolved from shillings of 50 sen to multiples of RM10. Now, kids just wants to monitor their balance movement in theirMaybank2U accounts.

l) Calling from Penang to Kuala Lumpur use to cost an arm and a leg (RM3.60) for every three minutes. Now, it cost only RM0.30 to call China. U can talk to almost anyone in the world for pittance.

m) One use to pay the RTD (JPJ) for use of the road in the form of roadtax. Now they have made it simpler for us to pay the Govt thru direct and indirect manner. We have to pay JPJ, Customs, PLUS and Police (summons). I am sure one day we will have prepaid summonses.


All this in the space of 10 to 20 years, Malaysia sure has come a long way. I wonder what your experience has been like.

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11 comments:

Anonymous said...

kenebanned = zul

Anonymous said...

alamak....rasa like old already...since all the items that u mentioned dah lalui...erk!!!

The Editor said...

[kenebanned] Aiyoh...

[rafidah] kita ni dinosaur, tengok budak budak muda yang under 30 years old. Ok le

Anonymous said...

you forget to mention that when we are in standard one, our lunch money is 10cents until standard 3 then 15cents.. upgrade 5cents ony..!!! now its RM5 and nothing less.. those damn 80/90's kids!!!

and can u stop bloging abt getting old stuff ? its sad man.. sad..

Anonymous said...

Watching a movie costs 65cents? Man, you are old... :P

The Editor said...

[alphademon] I'll stop blogging if u stop telling jokes ;)

[anonymous] Well, not that old tho, enuf for some of the bloggers to remember slide rule instead of calculator

Anonymous said...

hmm.....kinda bring the memories of having panpal....at least u managed to get sincere friends , but now in cyber world, hard to trust anybody huh?

Anonymous said...

Yeah.. when I was a child, I used to collect stamps as a hobby. One lazy afternoon, sometime this year, I was walking down memory lane looking at my old stamp albums, and my kid asked 'You collect those? Auww.. so boring!'

The Editor said...

[Anonymous] I don't think there is any difference between penpals and online chat except the speed one gets bamboozled. Snail Mails do take time for some of us gullible people to get conned. ;)

[Sherry] You are luckly you do not have to explain the glamour of stamp exchange or first day cover.

Anonymous said...

Technology is wonderful...
Pink mini iPod is wonderful...
Starbucks is quite alright...
Gymming is nice too...
Having a new laptop would be wonderful too...

Oh and you're right. Nowadays, when someone does not reply on YM withing 1 minute, we nudge!~!! hehehe.

And cinema is not all that cool anymore when we can have a dvd player in each room of the house. hahaha.

The technology and advancement have been real great and truly a blessing. =)

Btw, what is a slide rule?

--Liyana M.

The Editor said...

[Liyana M] A Slide rule is a calculator that does not use battery. Its a device that predates the calculator.